Chapter 2 - THE AUDIO RECORDING
Arthur’s voice played from the small speaker of Naomi’s phone, steady and clinical.
“Once he attacks Camille, the cameras will catch it. The police will remove him. If he resists, the guards know what to do. The trust defaults to the fiancée upon his death or incarceration. We take the assets, we take the routes. The children go to boarding school in Switzerland. Permanent.”
I stood frozen behind the marble column.
My own lawyer. A man who had eaten at my dinner table. A man who had bought Jack his first baseball glove.
“Roman,” Naomi whispered, her hand still gripping my arm. “You can’t go in there. If you touch her, they win.”
My blood screamed for violence. My hands ached to wrap around Camille’s neck. I looked through the doorway. She was still looming over Jack, her shadow falling across my son’s trembling shoulders.
“Pick up the glass,” Camille snapped at him, pointing to the spilled orange juice over Rosie’s drawings.
Jack reached down. His small fingers shook.
If I walked in and tore the room apart, I would lose them. I had built an empire by being three steps ahead of my enemies. I had forgotten to treat my own home like a battlefield.
I took a slow, deep breath, forcing the monster back into its cage.
“Put the phone away,” I told Naomi. My voice was eerily calm. “Go to the kitchen. Warm up some milk. Act completely normal.”
Naomi nodded, her eyes wide but trusting. She slipped away into the shadows.
I stepped out from behind the column and walked heavily toward the library. I made sure my footsteps were loud. Deliberate.
Camille snapped her head toward the doorway. Instantly, her entire posture changed. The cruel, towering monster vanished. Her shoulders slumped. Her eyes widened with manufactured relief.
“Roman,” she breathed, rushing toward me. “Thank God you’re home. The children… they’ve been so upset tonight. I’ve been trying everything to calm them down.”
I looked at my children. Rosie was clutching the ruined rabbit, her eyes terrified. Jack stood rigidly, waiting for the punishment he had been conditioned to expect.
I looked at Camille. “Is that so.”
“Jack knocked over the juice in a tantrum,” she sighed, rubbing her temples. “I’m trying to teach them discipline, darling. But it’s hard. They miss their mother.”
I didn’t look at the cameras in the hallway. I didn’t look at the security guards standing at the end of the corridor.
Instead, I knelt on the ruined drawings. The juice soaked into my custom suit pants.
“Jack,” I said softly.
My son flinched. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m weak.”
“No,” I said. I reached out and pulled him against my chest. He stiffened, then collapsed against me, burying his face in my neck. I reached out with my other arm and pulled Rosie into my lap. She smelled like tears and orange juice.
“You aren’t weak,” I whispered into Jack’s hair. “You are the strongest boy I know.”
Camille stood above us, her face tightening. This wasn’t the script. I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t losing control.
“Roman, you’re indulging them,” Camille said coldly.
“They’re my children,” I said, looking up at her. I kept my face a perfect, blank mask. “And they are going to bed.”
I stood up, holding Rosie in my left arm and holding Jack’s hand in my right. As I turned to leave the library, my shoe brushed against something under the sofa.
I paused, leaning down to pick it up.
It was a small, silver locket.
May you like
Isabella’s locket. The one she had been wearing the night her car went off the bridge. The one the police said was lost in the wreckage.
I stared at the cold metal in my palm, then looked at Camille. Her face had gone completely white.
